Opens: August 29
Genre: Realist crime drama
Duration: 102 minutes

Italian director Matteo Garrone burst onto the international scene a decade ago with Gomorrah, a powerful series of stories based on true-life incidents involving the Neapolitan mafia’s vice-like grip over the region’s everyday life. His latest film boils down that approach to a tale of a single character who’s part of a close-knit community in a seedy Italian beachside suburb. From the jolting first shot to the desperately sad final one, the film is a knockout that left me at the climax feeling floored, almost breathless.

Marcello (Marcello Fonte) is a middle-aged man with two loves in his poverty-stricken life: a young daughter from a former relationship, and the dogs that come through his grungy grooming salon. He treats both with tenderness and devotion, giving the aggressive animals as much care as the untroubled ones.

A good, albeit somewhat naïve, man, his one moral flaw is a small-time sideline in cocaine deals. This latter activity unfortunately puts him in the orbit of a very dangerous person, local thug Simone (Edoardo Pesce). I’ll leave readers to discover how this plays out. Suffice to say Marcello...